A provocative essay in The American Conservative by Austin Bramwell says that the conservative "movement" is useless at best and a misleading distraction at worst. Excerpt:
In short, conservatism is not a philosophy or approach to political affairs that inspires the set of institutions known as the conservative movement. Rather, the conservative movement is a set of institutions that inspires the ideology known as conservatism. In the absence of a movement, the felt need to develop a coherent understanding of conservatism would evaporate.Of course, the movement is not going anywhere and debates as to the meaning of conservatism will continue. Suppose, however, one agrees with this or that position closely associated with the movement. Does it follow that one should engage in movement-building activities? No. Non-movement conservatives have arguably done more to advance conservative ideas and without the burden of fitting them into an ideological system or wondering how they may affect their standing within an ideological movement.
A non-movement conservative by definition has no meaningful affiliation with movement conservative institutions. He may not even care whether others call him a "conservative." (Indeed, movement conservatives may be quick to denounce him.) But that needn't limit his influence. On the contrary, consider the impact of these notable non-movement conservatives going back to the era of the movement's founding.
Bramwell goes on to discuss Joseph Schumpeter, Tom Wolfe and others. And then:
Only the non-movement conservatives have managed to upset the intellectual consensus, for they speak to the intellectual establishment rather than at it. Consider the major traumas of establishment liberalism: Jane Jacobs's Death and Life [of American Cities], Daniel Moynihan's 1965 Report on the Negro Family, E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Harvard commencement speech, Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind. At the time, not one of these authors was known as a movement conservative.
The man is onto something.
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The only thing Rod seemed to get from reading Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" was that he really didn't like Saul Alinsky and radicals. :)
Well, good heavens, I think everyone who's posted here, including Rod and Mr. Bramwell, have said something valuable. Each in their own way.
It takes all kinds of talents and all kinds of people to make anything happen. Was it not St. Paul (in one of his letters, can't remember which one) who talked of the many different kind of gifts (or charisms) that are needed to build up the church? As well as the value of being all things to all people?
If you're building a business, you need salesmen, and bookkeepers, and folks with technical skills to make the product or provide the service. A pleasant and efficient person to run the front office. A skillful driver to handle deliveries, etc.
It takes all kinds of people to contribute towards the advance of certain political ideas or "movements" ... and some of them, as Bramwell rightly points out, do it unwittingly. Others, of course, are self-conscious members of a particular "movement." It takes all kinds, and all kinds are welcome.
The conservative political movement has become a catalyst for unrestrained capitalism with the unborn child as its poster child. Individually, they may be somewhat compassionate, sensible people but the political manifesto has forged them into a cold heated group of legalists who have totally lost touch with the social approach taken by Jesus or the Old Testament prophets, willing to slander, lie, and manipulate to achieve their goal of taking over U.S. democracy and turning it into something else altogether. We MUST have a broader vision, model the compassion of Jesus for one another and those less fortunate than ourselves. How can we continue to follow heartless, dishonest leadership and call ourselves by Jesus' name? God will not hold us guiltless. My eyes have been opened and I can NEVER go back. I, too, have the scars to prove it and an empty social calendar as I've lost almost every friend I have due to my leaving my "conservative" politics behind. We must uphold and conserve what God holds sacred, and we must be liberal and loose freedom into our nation in the areas of fairness and compassion. It cannot be either/or! It MUST be "both/and."
This is pretty amusing. Maybe all the effective critiques of liberal thought do originate with liberals, as selfcritique. And conservatives, being sterile, thus invariably have to wait for liberals to produce them and then pounce.
"Maybe all the effective critiques of liberal thought do originate with liberals, as selfcritique. And conservatives, being sterile, thus invariably have to wait for liberals to produce them and then pounce."
While I wouldn't go that far, it is a fact that A) there have been conservatives who've decried the lack of self-criticism in the 'movement', and have even taken the next logical step and have offered some, and B) they've largely been ignored.
The problem is definitely not one of sterility, however, but one of a overly defensive, 'circle-the-wagons' mentality.
On the other hand, critiques of liberal thought by conservatives are usually dismissed without a glance based simply on their provenance. Liberals generally think conservatives have nothing to say, whereas if they actually read them occasionally they might think differently.
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